The University of California, Berkeley, just debuted a $130 million building for its Energy Biosciences Institute — a move that could boost downtown Berkeley and the city’s burgeoning bioscience cluster.

The 113,000-square-foot building brings together departments once scattered throughout the university’s campus into a space that could spur research collaboration and spin-off companies.

Most of the institute’s research focuses on turning non-fuel crops such as grass into fuel. For the university, the goal is not just to develop fuel technologies, but to do so in a way that considers the impact on society and the environment.

The EBI’s research “will hopefully be applied in the medium and longterm for solutions to energy and climate change,” said Susan Jenkins, managing director of the institute. “It’s a much bigger picture than trying to develop a fuel. It’s total systems solutions.”

UC Berkeley financed the building with bonds, donations and grants.

It will house a $500 million public-private partnership between UC Berkeley, the University of Illinois and oil giant BP that so far, includes 70 different research programs at both universities.

“The amount of bioscience research that’s occurring at UC Berkeley and (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab) will generate a pipeline of new companies we hope to capture in Berkeley and the region,” said Michael Caplan, Berkeley’s economic development director.

BP’s goal is to harness technology coming out of the EBI for commercial use, but any company can license it.

UC Berkeley had been trying to find a site for the institute for several years and originally considered one near the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in the Berkeley Hills, but those plans fell through.

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